Trump tweets prompt firms to rethink crisis communication plans

President-elect Donald Trump’s apparent ability to move markets with a few taps on his Twitter app is prompting a wide array of companies to rethink how they manage their reputations and respond to crises that can hit with an unprecedented combination: the speed of social media and the weight of the White House.

Firms that specialize in helping businesses prepare for and respond to such incidents say they’re racing to help companies develop plans specifically to address antagonistic tweets composed by a catty and cantankerous commander in chief.

From automakers like Ford and General Motors to aerospace firms like Boeing and Lockheed Martin to clothiers like L.L. Bean, no company is immune from the reputational and financial backlash that can follow a Trump tweet — even positive ones, given his penchant for controversy — and the wave of media attention that tends to come with it.

Richard Levick, president and CEO of the Levick public relations and communications firm, said he’s given several presentations to executives and boards of directors since the election, addressing Trump’s tweets and how to respond to them.

“For the first time since the whole Internet revolution began, from the questions they have and from the look in their eyes, you can see the realization that they’re facing a level of institutional, enterprise threat which obviates their whole crisis playbook,” Levick said. “You might as well burn the crisis playbooks.”

Trump’s ability to rouse his supporters with 140 characters means companies have to walk an increasingly precarious tightrope, Levick said, to avoid a bruising and expensive public dustup with the coming administration.

“All of a sudden, people who aren’t even customers or shareholders can have an extraordinary impact on shareholder value,” he said. “Companies now need to know not only the buying habits of their customers, but their politics as well.”

Where Trump might next direct his attention can be unpredictable. Yet most crisis communications professionals agree that companies are most vulnerable when an announcement or strategic decision might bump up against the incoming administration’s domestic policy goals, like bolstering American manufacturing.

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“The challenge, of course, is that it’s hard to respond with the same power as the president,” he added. Trump has “the two most powerful thumbs in the world.”

Acutely at risk, Campbell and others said, are companies that employ large numbers of foreign workers — like the technology industry, for example.

Some companies have looked to get ahead of the issue. Last week, Alibaba executive chairman Jack Ma met with the president-elect to announce that the Chinese Internet giant would create a claimed 1 million U.S. jobs by helping small domestic businesses sell to Asian markets.

Critics were skeptical about the company’s plan, saying it was unlikely to directly create such a vast number of jobs. But Paul Kranhold, who leads the West Coast operations of the Sard Verbinnen & Co. communications firm, saw the move as a savvy attempt to engage with the administration.

Amazon, whose CEO, Jeff Bezos, has found himself a frequent target of Trump’s scorn, similarly announced last week that it plans to create 100,000 full-time U.S. jobs over the next 18 months.

“They’re showing that they’re sensitive to the policy objectives of the new administration,” said Kranhold.

Choosing how to respond to a confrontational Trump tweet will always be a delicate case-by-case analysis, experts said. But there is consensus that taking a swift but measured approach is key.

In responding to a disparaging tweet, “companies need to be cautious and thoughtful because they don’t have to overreact to a man whose middle name is overreact,” said Sam Singer, the president of Singer Associates, a San Francisco corporate and crisis communications agency.

“The most important thing in all communications, particularly national communications, is to not have a knee-jerk response to a knee-jerk tweet from the president of the United States,” Singer said.

Communications experts concurred that in some instances, the best defense can be a good offense.

Levick said that companies which rely heavily on government contracts and businesses who sell products and services to other businesses will likely have little choice but to “go to the president on bended knee and give him his victory lap.”

Photo: Spencer Platt, Getty Images

Traders work at the New York Stock Exchange in November. The president- elect’s blistering critiques of firms on Twitter has at times hurt stock prices.

Traders work at the New York Stock Exchange in November. The...

But other firms less reliant on a close and cozy relationship with Washington — Levick singled out Silicon Valley companies — may, in fact, swing public sentiment their way by refusing to “genuflect,” he said.

“Other companies will realize that the king doesn’t have a lot of clothing here,” he said. “At some point in the not too -distant future, a company will realize that there is greater value in being courageous and standing up to the president.”

Vanity Fair has reportedly reaped the benefits of just such a strategy.

After it published a punishing review of Trump Grill in mid-December, calling it possibly the worst restaurant in America, the president-elect tweeted: “Has anyone looked at the really poor numbers of @VanityFair Magazine. Way down, big trouble, dead!”

Seizing the moment, Vanity Fair ran a banner on its website calling itself the “magazine Trump doesn’t want you to read.”